


Defrost Cycle

by fiasco_sauce



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Depressed Steve Rogers, Dom/sub Undertones, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Overstimulation, Steve Rogers is Not a Virgin, Tony Stark's Red Thong of Justice, Touch-Starved, but he is very tired, but they're both sort of into the idea, not really Sugar Daddy because Steve is rich too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-03-22 08:39:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13760373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiasco_sauce/pseuds/fiasco_sauce
Summary: Stark’s posture was casual, but his eyes were sharp and intent on Steve. “It doesn’t bother you that Fury’s whoring you out?”The phrasing felt like a test. Tony Stark's public appearances were more meticulously calculated than Steve had expected; Stark had a range of personas, and he deployed or discarded them at will to suit the situation.If he was being crude, it was on purpose. Stark was trying to shock or offend him.Steve wasn’t offended, and he sure as hell wasn’t shocked, but he did have an urge to pay back the attempt in kind, to try to get a rise out of Stark. In the blandest voice possible, Steve said, “I’m just glad to be doing my part.”That got an actual laugh, a startled bark that made Stark--wake up, somehow. Now when he looked at Steve, he seemed to actuallyseehim. “Always the good little soldier?”“What else?”“I don’t know,” Stark said, hands in his pockets and elbows jutting out as he looked Steve up and down. “You’d make a pretty good rent boy."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because writing smut is helping me get through February, and because I saw a few too many posts about Steve Rogers immediately post-Avengers and his sadness errands and general crushing loneliness, and I needed to _fix it_.
> 
> This is an experiment for me on multiple levels, one of which is that this is a WIP that is very much still in progress, although the first chapter leaves off at a natural stopping point. More of this is in the works, but I don't have a timeline or update schedule. I'll put a warning in the front notes if the chapter ends on a cliffhanger. 
> 
> This takes place very soon after The Avengers, and opens with a (not particularly explicit) description of Steve having sex with an unnamed OFC, but the only sex in the rest of the fic is between Steve and Tony.

Steve hadn’t intended to sleep with the woman SHIELD had sent him to escort, but by the time he realized she had been flirting with him all evening, he couldn’t think of a graceful way to turn her down, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. It surprised him, in a dull way, that he’d gotten used to the attention--those lingering touches, the sidelong glances, the hungry smiles--to the point where he hadn’t recognized genuine flirtations intent, mistaking it instead for the kind of interest that America’s most famous science experiment always drew. He could remember when people only looked at him when he was yelling. Now he couldn’t get them to stop. 

The woman was attractive. While she rested her hand on Steve’s elbow and talked to other people, Steve looked at her face, her hands, the pearls looped around her long neck. Something in the strong set of her shoulders reminded him of Peggy, and that sparked a bit of genuine interest that Steve was too weak to suppress. He knew he shouldn’t use Peggy like that, shouldn’t look for her in other women, but the desire felt so  _ good_, a pool of heat low in his belly that grew whenever the woman tightened her grip on his arm. He wanted to hold onto it a little longer.

The woman must have noticed his glances. At the end of the evening, when he was escorting her home in the limo SHIELD had provided, she climbed into his lap. She was confident, directing every exchange of touches, and Steve followed her lead. It felt good to hold a warm body close. When she gripped the back of his neck and tilted his head up for a kiss, something in his spine went loose for the first time in ages. He could do this. He could please her, he could make her happy. Focusing on her let him clear his head for a while, gave him an easy mission with low stakes and no violence. The quiet in his mind was just as welcome as the heat in his body.

It was easy, when she pushed him back onto the seat, to lie down and move his hands to her hips. He had missed women. He had missed sex. It felt good to come, even if he didn’t feel much else beyond the satisfaction of a job well done. That was something. That was enough.

When she got out of the limo, she kissed him goodnight. The door closed behind her. The driver started the engine and turned around, heading back to SHIELD HQ, taking Steve back to his quarters. Steve closed his eyes. His shoulders were already tightening again, his chest squeezing inward and shortening his breath. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d released the tension he’d been carrying until it started to come back. 

Steve didn’t want it to come back. He wanted to live in the soft, warm moments where another person was there with him in the dark.

The next time he escorted someone for SHIELD, when she gave him a head-to-toe sweeping look, he smiled back as brightly as he could. When she went home, she took him with her, and he didn’t have to be alone again until the next morning. 

  


* * *

  


“There are some interesting rumors getting around, Cap.”

“Oh?” Steve said evenly. He didn’t know why Stark was standing in his SHIELD quarters talking to him, but Stark looked too keyed up for it to be about the briefing they had just attended with Coulson and Maria Hill. “Rumors about what?”

Stark and Steve had been the only Avengers present--Barton and Romanoff were on a mission overseas, and Dr. Banner had stayed at Stark Tower. “He’s a little leery of walking into a SHIELD building, seeing as how you guys have a habit of building specialty containment cages for the Hulk,” Stark had said, not looking up from his tablet. “He finds that a little bit off-putting, for some reason.”

Coulson hadn’t pressed the point, although he and Hill had exchanged a speaking look. Stark had been quiet after that, apparently half-asleep during Coulson’s briefing on AIM’s latest movements and the growing unrest in the Balkans. Steve had dutifully asked questions whenever he hadn't understood something. Stark had glanced pityingly at Steve’s pad of notebook paper and hand-written notes, but hadn’t bothered to make fun of him for it. Steve didn’t need the notes, really, not with his memory. He just felt better with paper and pen in his hand. 

Stark had only perked up when the briefing finished and everyone went their separate ways. Steve hadn’t said anything when Stark trailed after him. He had assumed Stark would peel off on his own soon enough. Instead, Stark had followed Steve to his barracks quarters and walked straight inside when Steve opened the door.

“Your little escort missions for Fury,” Stark said now, as he wandered through the small room. “Wining and dining all those influential single ladies? Emphasis on  _ escort?_”

Steve felt a flare of anger, but it guttered out a second later. Of course the women had gossiped about it; maybe not all of them, not if Steve wasn’t getting called in to account for tabloid headlines about it, but enough that it rose to the level of Stark’s ears. He wondered, distantly, if Coulson knew. Fury probably did, if Stark had already heard. Fury must not have disapproved, or at least, not disapproved enough to try to make Steve stop. It was probably good for SHIELD. Whatever goodwill Fury was trying to sow via Captain America’s presence as an evening companion must be doubled by Captain America as a bed partner.

“What about them?” 

Stark was straightening the things on top of the dresser--a comb, a belt, a wristwatch SHIELD had given him that Steve kept forgetting to put on--as though he owned the place. Steve had only been sleeping here a few weeks. The room was just a room, and everything in it was too impersonal for Steve to get worked up about the intrusion. Stark’s posture was casual, but his eyes were sharp and intent on Steve. “It doesn’t bother you that Fury’s whoring you out?”

The phrasing felt like a test. Steve had read up on Tony Stark since their last encounter, and had watched the videos, too--the drunken playboy videos from his twenties, but also the ones where he mouthed off to Senate intelligence committees or delivered eloquent, diplomatic fundraising appeals for the Maria Stark Foundation. His public appearances were more meticulously calculated than Steve had expected. Stark had a range of personas, and he deployed or discarded them at will to suit the situation. 

If he was being crude, it was on purpose. Stark was trying to shock or offend him.

Steve wasn’t offended, and he sure as hell wasn’t shocked, but he did have an urge to pay back the attempt in kind, to try to get a rise out of Stark. In the blandest voice possible, Steve said, “I’m just glad to be doing my part.”

That got an actual laugh, a startled bark that made Stark--wake up, somehow. Now when he looked at Steve, he seemed to actually  _ see _ him. “Always the good little soldier?”

“What else?”

“I don’t know,” Stark said, hands in his pockets and elbows jutting out as he looked Steve up and down. “You’d make a pretty good rent boy. If the rumors are true, that is. What do you think?”

Steve wasn’t the sort of man who backed down from a dare, and he had enough pent-up frustration that Stark’s obnoxiousness felt satisfying, like something he could safely push against. “You want to find out?”

“Is that an offer?”

Steve looked Stark dead in the eyes and dropped to his knees.

Now  _ Stark  _ was shocked. Steve could see it in his eyes, the way they widened despite all Stark’s self-possession, and in the sudden stillness of Stark’s body. For a second he thought Stark was going to turn tail and run. That would have been its own kind of victory, but not quite what Steve was hoping for. Instead Stark left his hands in his pockets, holding still as Steve reached for his belt, and that felt like a victory, too.

Stark didn’t speak until Steve was undoing his zipper. “What’s your safeword?”

At first Steve thought the question was another jibe, another reference the Capsicle wouldn’t understand, but Stark’s voice was oddly neutral, without the sneer Steve would have expected if the question were really at his expense. Steve did know what a safeword was, vaguely. It hadn’t been in the book on health and sexuality that a very earnest SHIELD nurse had pressed upon him as part of his medical orientation, but Steve had a lot of downtime these days. The internet had expanded his sexual education considerably, sometimes in ways that made Steve sorry he’d ever asked. Overall, though, he was glad for all his furtive research. Good intel was always useful. 

He wasn’t sure what Stark was planning on doing that would mean Steve needed a safeword, but it didn’t matter. If Stark wanted to hit him, that was fine. He’d heal. “Valkyrie.”

“Mine’s palladium.”

Steve definitely wasn’t going to hit Stark--even before the serum, he hadn’t been interested in that sort of thing, and now it seemed like a great way to accidentally kill someone--but he appreciated the sense of reciprocity. 

He gave Stark a few seconds to raise further objections before opening his fly and moving the fabric back. When he saw what was under them, Steve snorted despite himself.

“What?” Stark said. “It’s very comfortable.”

“I’m sure,” Steve said dryly, and moved the red satin thong down, careful not to catch the waistband on Stark’s cock. It was half hard already, and getting harder as Steve looked at it. 

“Do you need an instruction manual or something,” Stark said, “because I could--”

He cut off with a little choked noise as Steve took him down as far and as fast as he could. “Oh,  _ Jesus_,” Stark said, forgetting to be suave and snarky for a whole two seconds, and got his hands into Steve’s hair. Stark’s grip was close down by the roots, an all-over pressure instead of a sharp pull, and Steve hummed his approval.

Stark’s dick fattened nicely in Steve’s mouth. Steve had missed this, too--the smell of it, the feel of thin blood-hot skin, urgent and delicate at the same time. He would have liked to take his time, but that wasn’t the game they were playing. Steve pulled out every trick he knew to get Stark off hard and fast. 

In an odd show of restraint, Stark pulled his hands out of Steve’s hair and kept them fisted at his sides as soon as he got close to coming. It wasn’t disinterest, not with the way Stark let out surprised little grunts whenever Steve did something unexpected with his tongue, not with the way Stark’s thighs started to tremble under Steve’s hands. They shook all the way through Stark’s orgasm. 

Steve swallowed him down, showy about it; he didn’t have much of a gag reflex anymore, and he could hold his breath for a long time. It wasn’t how anyone had intended him to use the serum’s benefits, but Steve wasn’t one to leave an advantage lying on the table. 

“God, that was hot,” Stark said, the words sounding punched out of him, like they surprised him as much as they did Steve.  _ Now  _ Stark ran his hands through Steve’s hair and stroked down his cheeks, one thumb trailing over Steve's wet lips. Steve couldn’t help but lean into it, just a little, hungry for the warmth of Stark’s skin.

Stark took a few deep lungfuls of air before he pushed Steve back a few inches and pulled his underwear back up. “Okay. Pack your stuff.”

“What for?” Steve licked his lips clean. Stark’s eyes tracked the movement, blatantly appreciative.

“You’re coming back with me to the Tower, obviously. This place is a shithole, and it’ll be a lot easier to fuck you if I don’t have to get an invite from Fury every time. Is this all SHIELD-issue?” Stark was rummaging through the dresser drawers, making disgusted noises. “Jesus, nevermind, don’t pack any of this, I’ll buy you clothes that don’t come in bulk packs of twenty. Do you own anything that isn’t garbage?”

“Just the shield,” Steve said, getting to his feet and adjusting the fit of his pants. He was half hard just from the sounds Stark had made, but it wasn’t urgent. It would go away if he ignored it. He briefly considered taking himself in hand, but he was more interested in watching to see what Stark would do next, and Stark’s focus had clearly moved on.

Steve waited until Stark’s back was turned before he opened his nightstand drawer and slipped the compass inside into his pocket. It was the only thing left that was really Steve’s. Everything else, even his body, belonged to Captain America.

“Yes, yes, obviously we’re taking that.” Stark typed rapidly into his tablet, the dresser drawers left open behind him. “The car’s on its way. All right, vaminos, let’s move it before Fury shows up and tries to steal you back.”

Stark walked out of Steve’s quarters without a backwards glance. Steve followed, for some reason. “Is this a kidnapping?”

“Sure, let’s go with that.” Stark took the corridors at a purposeful stride that was just barely slower than a jog. SHIELD agents glanced at Steve walking a half step behind him and moved out of the way, assuming they were hurrying for an important reason. 

Steve felt the familiar thrill of getting away with something. He could still taste Stark in his mouth, and the contrast between  _ that  _ and the SHIELD agents’ deference was so absurd it made the whole experience surreal, like it was happening in a dream. 

“You’ll enjoy being kidnapped,” Stark said flippantly, as he pushed through the front door and jogged down the front steps. “I guarantee the food’s better at my place, and there’s no way I’m going to my knees on SHIELD-issue berber carpet, but I’m not opposed to returning the favor once we’re somewhere with less depressing decor.”

“Can’t say I’ve ever noticed the furniture in the middle of a blowjob.”

“You’ve clearly never been blown in the lap of luxury, which is a gap in your education I plan to address post-haste.” A limo pulled up to the no-parking zone just as they reached the sidewalk. Stark opened the door and looked at Steve. “You coming?”

Steve wasn’t sure why he got into the limo. Maybe because Stark had goaded Steve into sucking him off in the middle of his military quarters, which was the kind of reckless bullshit Steve Rogers used to do all the time. It was good to know that dumb kid was still alive inside Captain America, somewhere.

Even if Stark only saw him as a source of blowjobs, that was better than SHIELD seeing him as a wind-up soldier. Steve remembered when fighting used to make him feel alive. Now it just made him feel tired. 

It was probably perverse that he’d felt more awake with Stark’s cock in his mouth than he had during his last firefight, but Steve was too exhausted to care. He got in the car.

Stark swung in behind him, shut the door, and knocked his hand against the roof. “Take it away, Happy, we’re heading straight home before a goon squad materializes to arrest me.”

“Is that likely, boss?” the driver asked--cautiously, not like it was a joke, but an actual possibility he had to prepare for.

“More unlikely than not, but it pays to be prepared. You like Thai food?” Stark said to Steve.

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll like it,” Stark decided. “Everyone likes Thai food. What’s your favorite color?”

“Why?”

“We have to paint your walls something. I can put you up in a guest suite for now, but--”

“No,” Steve interrupted, hands fisting on his thighs. Stark looked up from his tablet, eyes keenly observant, and Steve tried to smooth his hands flat again. “I’ll just--sleep on your couch or something. Or I can go back to SHIELD. If that’s too much trouble.”

“Can’t, kidnapped,” Stark shot back. “Fine, couch it is, if you want, although I do have a perfectly nice spare bedroom you could sleep in. I think it’s got a few disassembled circuit boards from the last person who slept over, but just teach yourself how to solder and it’ll be a soothing bedtime activity.” 

“I already know how to solder,” Steve said. “Who was soldering in your spare bedroom?”

Stark launched into an anecdote about a pair of mechanical engineers who he’d found unexpectedly at a charity ball and then enticed back to the Tower with the promise of a workshop tour--Steve was starting to suspect Stark had a habit of scooping up people who caught his attention and carrying them home like a kid finding kittens--and an all-night engineering binge that had only ended when Pepper physically steered Stark’s guests into a room with a bed and turned off the light. Steve relaxed back against the seat and let the words wash over him.

As the limo was creeping down the street towards the Tower garage, traffic restricting them to a snail’s pace, Steve started laughing. He tried to stop and couldn’t. It kept working its way out of him, like air bubbles rising through a swamp.

“What?” Stark said, a little warily.

“It’s just funny. Back when I was rooming with Bucky, everyone on the block thought I was his kept man, and nothing we did could convince them otherwise. And now I’m moving in with you so we can fool around, and everyone’s going to think it’s for work. Oh, Captain America is living with his teammates, how  _ respectable_.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. You don’t know my reputation. I’m sure the tabloids will get around to calling me your sugar daddy sooner or later.” 

“Probably,” Steve said, feeling weirdly cheerful about it. “But people won’t believe it. They’ll still say it, because it’s a good story and it’s fun to talk about, but they won’t  _ believe  _ it. Not with  _ my  _ reputation.”

Stark set his tablet aside. “You know, I don’t think we’ve met,” he said abruptly, and held out his hand. “I’m Tony.”

“Steve,” he said, and shook Tony’s hand. “Call me Steve.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for internalized ableism about mental health and a mention of possible suicidal ideation, both present very briefly.

If Steve had thought about it, he would have expected dinner to be awkward. 

It wasn’t, somehow. Tony ushered Steve out of the limo and into the penthouse elevator like they’d done this a dozen times before. He kept talking the whole time, giving Steve an overview of the Tower’s security features and how its floors were divided. Most of the floors were office space for Stark Industries, with laboratories above the offices and rented commercial space above the lobby. Residential floors were at the very top. 

The penthouse was something out of a science fiction film, all wide open spaces and gleaming metal and glass. A spindly three-armed robot had popped out of a closet to take Tony’s coat; Tony had given it an absent-minded pat before it retreated. Steve felt like he’d walked onto the set of Metropolis. 

Tony directed Steve to the kitchen (which was about three times the size of Steve’s SHIELD quarters; Steve felt like he could get lost just looking for a juice glass) and started unpacking the bags of food that were sitting on the counter, still hot enough to let out a puff of steam whenever Tony opened a container.

“How’d the food get here?” Steve asked, only mildly curious. He had slipped back into that faint sense of unreality he’d felt walking down the SHIELD hallways. If walking down the street made him feel like he was in the wrong era, walking through Stark Tower made him feel like he was on another planet. It wasn’t worse, exactly, but it was stranger. Steve couldn’t stop eyeing the unfamiliar kitchen appliances and wondering if they were about to spring to life.

“Minions,” Tony said, like that was explanation enough. “Judging by how you ate your own body weight in shawarma last time, I’m guessing your metabolism burns through calories as fast as you can eat them, so I just got one of everything.”

From someone else, that might have been an exaggeration. Steve was starting to understand why the kitchen bar was half the length of a swimming pool: it gave them enough space to unpack an entire restaurant’s worth of food. 

Something in Steve twinged at the waste--but there was room in the refrigerator for whatever they didn’t eat, and he could eat whatever was left tomorrow, and the next day, until it was gone. He’d still be here tomorrow. That thought helped ground him a little. The smell of the food, spicy and rich and unfamiliar, did the rest.

In lieu of plates, Tony handed him a fork and gestured to the opened take-out containers. “Go to town.”

Steve was halfway through a stack of scallion pancakes, which were delicious enough that he was considering finishing the container without letting Tony have any, when JARVIS pinged.

“Sir, Director Fury is on the line.”

“Well, that didn’t take long.” Tony swung his feet up onto the stool beside him. He had commandeered a container of drunken noodles early on and had been picking at it lazily, taking one bite for every ten of Steve’s. “Patch him through, no visual.”

A moment later, Fury’s voice rang through the room’s speakers. “Where is Captain Rogers?”

Steve could have said something;  _ I’m right here, Director Fury_. He took another bite instead. His back was iron hard, every muscle tense as he resisted the urge to report in. He wouldn’t have dared to ignore that tone of voice from Colonel Phillips, but Colonel Phillips was long dead, and Director Fury wasn’t really his commanding officer, for all that he sent Steve out on missions. Steve wasn’t officially a soldier anymore. Steve wasn’t officially anything.

“Is he really a Captain?” Tony asked. “Did someone actually put the paperwork through to elevate his army rank, or was it just one of those propaganda things?”

“Now is not the time to be cute with me, Stark.”

“Awww, Nicky, you think I’m cute?” 

“I need to talk to him.”

“So call him. I’m pretty sure you have his number.”

Steve could hear Fury gritting his teeth. “He left his phone behind.”

Oh, right. Steve could picture it, the sleek black SHIELD phone that was probably still lying on his nightstand. It didn’t feel like something that belonged to him. He certainly wouldn’t miss it.

“You think maybe that means he doesn’t want to talk to you?” Tony asked rhetorically.

“We know he went back with you to Stark Tower. I need to know if he’s still there.” 

“Oh, yeah, I guess the trackers you guys sewed into all his clothes don’t work so well in my building,” Tony said. “And the bugs in his room probably didn’t pick up anything we said while I was in there, huh? How inconsiderate of me to scramble all your little spy gadgets.”

Tony’s eyes were steady on Steve, measuring his reaction. Steve kept his face blank as he chewed and swallowed. It didn’t surprise him that SHIELD had trackers on him, or even audio in his quarters. It burned, somewhere buried deep, that someone had been listening to his nightmares, that someone might have heard the names he called out in his sleep--but that was all. He’d given up his right to privacy when he’d enlisted, and then again when he’d volunteered to be a lab rat. There wasn’t much of it left for SHIELD to invade.

“We monitor him for his own protection.”

“You mean you have him on suicide watch.”

Steve must have visibly reacted to that. Tony was suddenly standing in front of him, his hand pressed over Steve’s heart. It was racing under Tony’s palm. Steve was--afraid, maybe. Ashamed. He didn’t know. 

“I know you don’t like him,” Fury said, and Tony raised an eyebrow at Steve, inviting him to share the joke. Steve managed to lift one corner of his mouth in acknowledgment. It was easier to let his face move when Tony was touching him, easier to react instead of shutting down when he could feel his heart pounding against the palm of Tony’s hand, tangible proof that Steve was alive, that he wasn’t carved from stone. “But Steve Rogers has been through hell. He’s lost. We’re trying to help him.”

“I actually believe that,” Tony said, “but you were doing a shitty job, and I can do better. I’m keeping him. You want to talk to him, send him a letter, I’ll pass it along. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” Tony made a slashing gesture and JARVIS cut off the call while Fury was still drawing breath to respond. 

“Come here,” Tony said, and fisted his hand into Steve’s shirt, using his grip on the fabric over Steve’s heart to pull Steve off the stool. Steve slid off obediently, still reeling from what he’d heard. What Tony had said. The way it let Steve know that Tony knew about his weakness without them having to talk about it. Steve would have to think more about that later. Right now he was focusing on not holding his breath. His asthma had been gone for years ( _decades_ ), but it was still a habit to breathe slowly and steadily whenever his pulse roared in his ears. 

Tony pulled Steve over to a white leather sofa and pushed him onto it. Steve let his empty hands splay out to his sides. “Stay there,” Tony said. “I’m getting you a drink.”

“I can’t get drunk.”

“I don’t care. Count backwards from thirty. I’ll be back before you’re done.”

The pressure of Tony’s hand was gone. Steve closed his eyes and started counting.  _ 30, 29, 28, 27_. He could hear Tony moving around the room behind him. Glass clinked, liquid sloshed.  _ 14, 13, 12, 11_. 

Steve opened his eyes when he got to zero. Tony was kneeling in front of him, a tumbler of liquid and ice in his outstretched hand. Steve took it and brought it to his lips. The sharpness of the scotch washing over his tongue surprised him. It was strong enough to make his whole mouth tingle, although the burn faded fast.

“You couldn’t get stuff like this where I grew up.” It was more of a  _ when  _ than a  _ where_, Steve supposed. All the drinks had been watered down during prohibition.

“Whereas I started raiding Howard’s private stash at the age of fourteen,” Tony said. “Which I would not generally recommend. Booze is a risky coping strategy, but for you, it’s safer than most.” 

Tony was touching him again, both hands resting on top of Steve’s thighs. Steve was still wearing his SHIELD-issued khakis. The thin fabric didn’t do much to dull the heat of Tony’s palms.

“My pants are bugged,” Steve said.

The crows’ feet at the corners of Tony’s eyes deepened. “Not bugged, just tracked. Don’t be melodramatic, Rogers. Should I make the bad, bad pants go away?”

It hit Steve all at once that Tony was on his knees in front of him. He had to take another sip of scotch; his mouth was suddenly too dry to speak. “The carpets here are expensive enough?”

“More expensive than SHIELD’s, that’s for sure.” Tony took the glass out of Steve’s hand and set it on a side table. Steve watched condensation bead on the side of the glass.

“Shouldn’t you use a coaster?”

“Do you always argue this much with people who are trying to blow you? Take your shirt off already, work with me here.”

Steve took his shirt off. For lack of a better idea, he pushed it down behind his back and sat on it. He didn’t want to leave a stain on the sofa. It probably cost more than all the furniture in his SHIELD room combined. 

He heard the faintest increase in background noise and froze as the implications hit him. Tony, who had been undoing Steve’s zipper, paused and looked up at him.

“Did the heat just turn up because I took my shirt off?” Steve’s voice was a little squeakier than he expected.

“Probably,” Tony said. “JARVIS does that kind of thing, he’s very considerate.”

“JARVIS?”

“Introduce yourself, J.”

The gleam of mischief in Tony’s eyes put Steve on alert a second before a disembodied male voice said, “Good evening, Captain Rogers.” The tiny bit of advance warning was the only reason he didn’t startle hard enough to fall off the couch.

“Please don’t be alarmed,” the voice added, pleasant and apologetic. “I am an artificial intelligence system tasked with monitoring Stark Tower and protecting its inhabitants. My adjustment to the room’s climate control was intended for your comfort. I apologize for any distress it may have caused.”

“It’s not a problem,” Steve said, keeping his voice even. “Am I correct in assuming you have visual and audio surveillance of this room?”

“And the entire penthouse, unless I am told to cease monitoring,” JARVIS said.

Tony, apparently bored with the conversation, tried to tug Steve’s pants down to his thighs. Steve grabbed the waistband and narrowed his eyes at Tony. “JARVIS, would you mind not monitoring for a bit?”

“Sir?”

“Sure, J, two hour blackout, unless you hear an activation code,” Tony said. “All right, he’s not listening anymore. Something bothering you, Steve?”

Steve fought the urge to cross his arms over his bare chest. “I can’t have sex while JARVIS is watching.”

Tony looked genuinely nonplussed. “So SHIELD bugging your room doesn’t bother you, but JARVIS does?”

“If he’s watching  _ this_, then yes. It’s not--appropriate,” Steve said, face flaming. “He didn’t ask to be involved in this. An artificial intelligence is sentient, right? Like a person?”

Tony grabbed Steve by the hair and pulled him down into an unexpectedly fierce kiss. By the time he pulled back, Steve’s breathing was unsteady and his hands had found their way to Tony’s shoulders. 

“Yeah, he is,” Tony said, “and if you knew how long it took most people to understand that, you’d know how incredibly hot it is that you got it right away. I can make a blanket rule for JARVIS to stop monitoring the penthouse feed once your clothes start coming off. That work for you?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, his shoulders relaxing. “That works.”

“I’ll tell him as soon as he’s listening again. Now can I please take your pants off? I want to get my mouth on your dick already.”

Steve lifted his hips while Tony pulled his pants and boxers down over his ass. "I didn’t think rent boys were usually on this side of the equation."

"They are when they're as pretty as you."

Steve flushed hard. Tony was fully clothed, kneeling between Steve’s spread thighs, while Steve sat on the sofa as bare as the day he was born. The look on Tony’s face was nakedly appreciative, and when he noticed the red spilling down Steve’s face and neck, it turned downright avaricious.

"Wow, if that's all it takes to get you to blush, we are definitely going to have fun. Didn’t any of your SHIELD-assigned dinner dates tell you how pretty you are?"

“Not exactly,” Steve said, his voice a little strangled. “There wasn’t a whole lot of talking.”

“Lucky for you, I never stop talking, it’s one of my greatest gifts. Obviously this is one of yours,” Tony said, and casually wrapped his hand around Steve’s half-hard cock. Steve’s breath caught at the feel of Tony’s palm, slick and a little cool from holding the glass of scotch and ice. He waited for Tony to move, but Tony just left his hand there and kept looking Steve over.

“Honestly, what a wasted opportunity,” Tony murmured, trailing his other hand over Steve’s thigh. He stroked down towards Steve’s knee, smoothing over the fine golden hairs. “If you were my kept man for real, I don’t think I’d let you wear clothes. Covering all this is a sin.”

Steve’s cock twitched in Tony’s hand. 

“Oh, you like that idea?” Tony leaned in closer, first kissing lightly across Steve’s chest, then latching onto the skin over Steve’s breastbone and sucking a mark there, scraping his teeth over it so the imprint he left behind was lividly red. Steve dug his fingers into the cushions to keep from reaching for Tony’s head and holding it in place. “We’ll have to try it sometime. I’ve never actually had a kept man, just so you know, the kind of people who’ve offered can never pass the background checks. They’d sell the whole sordid story to the first publishing house to offer them a three book contract. But it’s not like you need the money, not now that your backpay’s gone through.”

“I don’t even know what to do with it,” Steve said, because Tony was giving his nipples a considering look and the only other thing he could think to say was  _ please please please_. “How do you spend that much money?”

“I could show you, but I don’t think you really want to know.” Tony rubbed his thumb over the head of Steve’s dick, just a few idle swipes, and then, maddeningly, stilled again. “I don’t think you want to be rich. You could have gone anywhere if you just wanted to get out of SHIELD’s depressing little dormitory. You could stay in a luxury hotel or rent a loft apartment in SoHo or buy a five-bedroom McMansion upstate, but you’d rather sleep on my couch. Yes or no?” He stroked up and down Steve’s cock, the sudden friction sending heat swirling up from Steve’s pelvis.

“Yes.” Steve’s hips jerked, and Tony made a fist for Steve to fuck up into for a few glorious strokes before he loosened his grip. Steve made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat and let his ass settle back onto the sofa.

“So we’ll do it like this for a while, until one of us wants to do something else.” 

“I won’t always do what you say.”

“You don’t have to,” Tony said easily, his hand tightening around Steve’s dick, “but most of the time, you’re going to want to.”

Based on recent evidence, it was hard to argue with that. Steve held carefully still and was rewarded by another few torturously pleasurable strokes of Tony’s hand.

“Does that conclude the conversational portion of the evening?” Tony asked, his voice light but his eyes fixed on Steve’s face. “Can I move onto the dick sucking, or did we have more to discuss?”

“By all means.”

Tony leaned forward and wrapped his lips around the head of Steve’s cock, and Steve’s brain whited out with pleasure. He didn’t understand why this was so  _ good_, so much better than what he remembered. The surreal feeling from before, that this couldn’t possibly be real, tried to rise up again, but this time he was fully anchored in his body, every inch of his skin alive with sensation. 

The heat of Tony’s mouth was scalding. Steve tried to hold back, to let the pleasure build, but Tony was working him over with skill and careful attention, repeating everything that made Steve react, driving him relentlessly onwards.

“Oh God,” Steve managed. “Tony, wait, I’m going to come, I--”

Tony pulled back just enough to run his hand along Steve’s whole shaft, firm and twisting a little with every upward stroke, and Steve was gone, toppling over the edge and coming over Tony’s fist. 

“Good,” Tony said, his voice much raspier now, and God, just hearing the difference was enough to send another spike of lust through Steve. “Very good, Steve. How many times can you come before you’re done for the night?”

“I don’t know.”

“Give me your highest record.”

Steve flushed again, ridiculously, as though talking about this was somehow  _ more  _ embarrassing than sitting there naked with Tony’s hand on Steve’s softening dick. “Seven.”

Tony whistled, and Steve put his hands over his face. “With a partner or on your own?”

“On my own.”

“We can do better,” Tony said confidently. “If I didn’t have an early meeting tomorrow, I’d spend all night proving it, but we’ll just table that experiment for later. For tonight, I’ll settle for three. You up for it?”

“Not just yet,” Steve deadpanned.

“Well, let me see what I can do about that.” Tony bent over him again, his lips already flushed red, and took Steve’s soft cock into his mouth. Steve jerked at the first pulse of pressure on sensitive skin, overstimulated even though Tony was being gentle, but not so much that it was truly uncomfortable. Tony could take all of him like this, could move his tongue along Steve’s whole length at once. His hands were braced on Steve’s thighs, thumbs rubbing gently over the soft skin. The touch was oddly soothing in contrast to the relentlessness heat of Tony’s mouth.

Steve hardened more slowly this time. Just the sight of Tony’s head working between Steve’s spread legs was enough to make him groan, but he’d just come five minutes ago, and even he needed  _ some  _ recovery period. Still, it wasn’t long before he was hard and squirming, his hands bracketing Tony’s wrists while Tony held his legs open.

Tony leaned back and stretched his jaw from side to side, unselfconscious about it. His hand moved slowly on Steve’s dick, just enough to keep him level, not enough to work him up more. “What do you want, babe? Tell me what you want.”

“More kissing,” Steve said, without even thinking about it. Tony blinked, clearly not expecting that answer, but before Steve could try to downplay it or take it back Tony was moving onto the sofa to straddle Steve’s lap, one hand on Steve’s bare shoulder and another on the back of his neck as Tony pulled him into a kiss.

Tony’s mouth was warm and inviting. The short hairs above Tony’s lip tickled in a way Steve didn’t expect, and he found himself laughing into the kiss. Tony huffed, the puff of air damp on Steve’s chin, then sucked Steve’s lower lip into his mouth and  _ bit  _ it. Steve jerked under him, heat jolting straight down to his cock.

Tony hummed and bit him again, lightly this time, just closing his teeth around Steve’s lip before letting go to sweep his tongue into Steve’s mouth. His long, deft fingers raked through the short hair on the back of Steve’s head. Steve slid his hands over Tony’s waist and back, rucking up his shirt until his fingers found bare skin. Tony’s hands went soft and lingering, his mouth more coaxing than demanding, and Steve had to bite back a whimper.

Steve couldn’t remember the last time he’d kissed for this long. There hadn’t been time for leisurely build-up during the war, and the furtive handjobs he’d traded with other soldiers hadn’t called for it, anyway. Most of the soldiers had wanted plausible deniability, the chance to pretend they were with a girl from back home. Steve hadn’t known how to advertise his own preferences anymore, not with his new body; it had been easier to pull men than women before he’d gotten the serum, when he’d never had to work hard to convince people the delicate art student who went to socialist rallies might be interested in guys as well as dames. 

That changed with his new body, or maybe with his new reputation. None of the soldiers who might have been genuinely interested in men had been willing to risk making a pass at Captain America. Steve hadn’t kissed anyone with his new body until Peggy, and they had barely gotten the chance to--

Steve surged into the kiss with renewed heat, desperate to reach the point where he could stop thinking. Tony broke away to mouth at the edge of Steve’s jaw. Steve tilted his chin and Tony took the silent encouragement, moving down to lay a trail of bites along Steve’s throat.

“Okay,” Tony murmured. “More kissing, check. Biting, also a big check. Jesus, I gave you a hickey fifteen minutes ago and it’s almost gone already, I don’t know whether to be annoyed or impressed. Do you tighten up that fast after someone fucks you?”

Heat flared in Steve’s cheeks. His ass muscles clenched as he tried to imagine it--his body, worked loose and open, fighting the serum’s attempts to return to baseline. “I have no idea.”

“You want to find out? I’d be happy to help you investigate, in the spirit of scientific inquiry.”

“I bet you say that to all the boys.”

“Just the genetically-enhanced ones.” Tony leaned over the arm of the sofa and opened a drawer in the end table. “So that’s a yes?”

He asked the question almost casually, while he wasn’t even looking at Steve, which made it easy for Steve to say, “Yes.” And then,  _ in for a penny, in for a pound_, to add, “Just put me where you want me.”

“Oh, I intend to.” Tony came back with a small plastic bottle in his hand.

“Is that lube?” Steve asked. “You keep lube in all your living room tables?”

“Hey, it’s saving us a trip to the bedroom right now, this is just good planning. Have you been fucked before?”

“Yeah, just not since I got the serum.”

Tony’s hands stopped moving and his eyes glazed over a little. “Just--give me a second to process that. Okay, done, we’re good. Up, up, c’mon.”

Tony stood and pulled Steve up with him, then turned him around so he was facing the arm of the couch. Steve felt dense heat pooling in his chest as Tony put a hand on the bare skin of his back.

“Down,” Tony said softly, and Steve went where Tony put him, bending over the arm of the sofa. Steve couldn’t stop imagining what he looked like to Tony at this angle, legs bent slightly so the sofa took his weight, the padded arm pressed firmly into his lower abdomen. His cock jerked, blurting precome down the side of the sofa.

“You are entirely, obscenely gorgeous.” Tony’s hands stroked over Steve’s back and sides. Steve arched into the touches, greedy for the contact. His knees felt watery. He spread his feet a little further apart, firming his stance, and pressed his forehead against the sofa cushion.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Tony groaned. His hands smoothed over Steve’s ass. One hand lifted away while the other squeezed, and Steve heard the  _ snick  _ of a plastic cap opening. 

Steve hid his face in his folded arms while Tony opened him up. Tony clearly knew what he was doing, stretching Steve quickly, but with plenty of slick to ease the way. “If you fuck me like this, I’m going to come all over your sofa.”

“That’s what cleaners are for.”

“Tony, _ no_ ,” Steve said, genuinely appalled. 

“See, that’s more like the reaction I was expecting when I insinuated you’d make a good rent boy. Well, I thought it’d be more on the lines of ‘Mr. Stark,  _ no_,’ probably followed by a punch to the face, but I do have my fingers in your ass, we’re clearly on a first-name basis by now.” 

Tony twisted his wrist, and Steve’s breath hitched in the middle of what would have been an indignant retort. Instead he said, more weakly than he would have liked, “I’m not leaving come all over the furniture for your maids to clean up.”

“I was talking about my robots, but if that offends your sense of decorum, feel free to clean it yourself later. Now relax, we’re getting to the good part here.”

Steve thought everything so far had been pretty damn fantastic, so he wasn’t sure what Tony meant, except that then Tony’s fingers pressed  _ in _ and  _ down _ and suddenly a wave of pleasure rolled up Steve’s spine. Steve grabbed the cushion below his chest so tightly he thought it was going to pop.

“ _There _ we go,” Tony said, with clear satisfaction. His other hand found Steve’s cock, stroking along the underside as Steve’s hips juddered helplessly forward, rubbing his erection against the underside of the sofa arm. 

Steve’s second orgasm took him by surprise. The shuddery, shivery pleasure crested abruptly, and he clenched down around Tony’s fingers as his cock spurted. Tony stroked him through it, his hands stilling as Steve finished.

“Should I keep going, or is it too much?” Tony moved his fingers in a slow spiral. Steve threw his head back as white hot sensation overwhelmed him. It  _ was  _ too much, but Steve  _ wanted  _ it to be too much, wanted his body to overload until his mind went quiet.

“Don’t stop.” His voice sounded strange to his own ears, but he wasn’t worried about it. He wasn’t worried about anything. “Don’t stop, please, Tony.”

Tony’s fingers felt huge now that Steve was oversensitized. Steve panted into the cushion, twitching whenever Tony grazed his prostate and the pleasure went achingly sharp. He didn’t track the time. His body loosened as his sensitivity dialed back down, relaxing into anticipation as his cock started to fill again. 

Tony leaned forward to kiss along the sweat-glazed skin of his back. The touch of Tony’s lips felt just as heady as the press of his fingers, and Steve arched into both indiscriminately, asking for more without words. He didn’t trust himself to speak. Whatever he said would give away too much, would reveal how much he needed this, and the last thing he wanted to do was put Tony off by demanding too much. This was already more than Steve had gotten from anyone else since he’d come out of the ice. This could be enough. Steve would have to learn how to let this be enough.

When Tony finally sank into him, what Steve felt most acutely, even more than the physical pleasure, was  _ relief_. Tony was in him, over him; Steve could feel him, the heavy drag of his cock and the heat of his thighs pressing forward into Steve’s. Tony held him by the hip and shoulder and rocked into him, and Steve let himself melt under Tony’s hands, his knees unlocking as he let the sofa take his weight.

“God, you feel good.” Tony rested his forehead between Steve’s shoulder blades, his hips flush against Steve’s ass. “You doing okay?”

“Yeah. Please,” Steve’s mouth added without his permission, “Tony, c’mon, please--”

Tony thrust forward and Steve shut his mouth gratefully. His climax built slowly, letting him wallow in the feeling of Tony’s hands and mouth and cock all working him over. He rocked back into Tony’s thrusts, his body working easily, automatically, without him having to direct it. It was like losing himself in the rhythm of fighting, but with the sure and certain knowledge that nobody was going to get hurt if he screwed up. 

“You feel  _ really _ good, fuck.” Tony’s hand slid down from Steve’s hip to cradle his balls, and Steve made a startled noise at the new burst of sensation. “Yeah, you’re close, come on, Steve, once more for me, good, that’s it, there we go--”

Steve’s head fizzed with static as his body locked up. He clenched hard on Tony’s dick, barely registering the sound of Tony groaning and speeding up behind him. All thought dropped out of his head while his body did its best to turn inside-out.

When Steve came back to himself, Tony’s hips had stilled, and his quick, unsteady breaths were evening out. Tony pulled out slowly, one hand sliding down Steve’s back before the touch disappeared. For a few panting breaths Steve was lying there alone, excruciatingly aware of the sweat already cooling on his skin, and then Tony's hands were on him, and Tony was stronger than Steve had thought, because he was rolling Steve onto his back on the couch even though Steve was nothing but dead weight. Tony leaned over him and kissed him, his mouth hot and insistent, and Steve's body relaxed again, inch by inch. 

After a while Tony slowed down, leaving more time in between each lingering press of his lips, gradually coming to a stop. He rested his head against Steve’s. “When I woke up this morning, this was really not how I expected the day to end. Not a complaint, mind you. Definitely not a complaint. Are you sticking to the cushions yet?”

Steve shifted experimentally, grimacing when his skin pulled. “Little bit.”

“Stay there, I’ll be right back.”

Steve sat up so he could watch Tony go into the kitchen. Tony wet a dish towel at the sink, then came back and used it to wipe Steve clean. Tony was mostly done before it occurred to Steve that it was something he could do himself. The belated awareness of his own passivity made Steve’s cheeks heat, but Tony was nothing but matter-of-fact about wiping the come from Steve’s skin, his hands as efficient and assured with this as they had been with everything else. 

“Okay,” Tony said, wrapping a large blanket he’d pulled off a nearby chair around Steve’s shoulders. He pressed a hand against Steve’s shoulder to encourage him to lie down again, then pulled the blanket over Steve’s legs and feet. It was very soft against Steve’s bare skin. “That was an extremely satisfying experiment, although I’d like to run a few follow-ups, I mean, what good is a successful outcome if you can’t replicate it? How are you feeling about our results?”

“Good,” Steve said honestly. “Tired.”

“You need anything else? A pillow, more blankets?”

Steve had to make a concerted effort to concentrate on the question. He hadn’t slept well all week, and the sleep deficit was making itself known now that Tony had expertly liquified all of his muscles via his scientifically-rigorous sex regimen. “No, I’m okay. You?”

Tony smiled at him, his hair in total disarray, his face a little flushed and much more relaxed than Steve had ever seen it before. “I’m perfect.”

Steve wasn’t sure what was going to fall out when he opened his mouth, but he wasn’t surprised to hear himself say, “Thank you.”

“It was my pleasure, Steve.” Tony smoothed a hand over Steve’s forehead, a weirdly sweet gesture. “Go to sleep.”

That was the best idea Steve had heard in months. His eyes closed on their own, and he was asleep before Tony took his hand away.

Steve woke to the sound of a door opening. The penthouse was dark and quiet, the windows smoked over so the ambient light of the city was dimmed. Steve kept quiet and still as footsteps crossed to the penthouse elevator. He wanted to ask why Tony was up and where he was going, but it felt too intrusive, the kind of question a lover would ask. He was just the bum sleeping on Tony’s couch. 

After Tony left, Steve stood up, taking the blanket with him. His clothes were in a pile on the floor; Steve ignored them. The blanket was soft and clean, and there was nobody here to dress for. The food was still spread out over the kitchen bar. Steve methodically put the lids back on the containers and stacked them in the refrigerator. 

The penthouse was very quiet. All the faint coughs and muffled footsteps that made Steve identify a building as active, as a place that housed people, were absent. His enhanced hearing could pick up the whirr of ventilation fans and the barely-there hum of appliances in the kitchen, but that was all. Steve could have been the only person alive and he wouldn’t have known the difference.

He crossed the room to the wall of windows. The smoked glass slowly cleared as he looked out, the penthouse brightening as it admitted the glow rising up off the streets. Steve stood at the window watching the lights of the city--the white arcs of headlights sweeping around corners, traffic lights cycling in a steady pattern, cars braking in a splash of red--until dawn washed over the streets in a sea of dim blue, and the smaller pinpricks of light were lost.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter Parker shows up in this chapter, but I haven't seen Spiderman: Homecoming (and in general I cheerfully ignore MCU canon after CA:TWS), so there's not going to be anything specific to Tom Holland's version of the character in this fic. He's around 19 in this.

Eventually it got too bright for Steve to avoid thinking about how he was standing by a window with only a blanket saving him from public indecency. Stark Tower was pretty high up, but there were already traffic helicopters circling not too far away. Steve didn’t want to risk becoming part of the local news’ morning bulletin.

He turned his attention to the penthouse, getting his first good look in daylight. At first glance it looked more like a hotel lobby than a living room. All the furniture was sleek and modern, spotlessly clean (apart from the sofa, which Steve was avoiding looking at closely, heat climbing his neck every time he thought about it), no stains on the cushions from dropped food, no claw marks from pets on the legs. Steve checked four tables before he found a dried brown circle marking where a coffee cup had overflowed. Finding it made him feel a little better.

There were other signs of habitation, once Steve looked for them. One of the two throw pillows on the room’s other couch was worn down in the middle. A rack of tools, from screwdrivers to spanners to things Steve couldn't identify, was mounted on the wall like a sculpture, but the tools showed signs of use: tiny nicks in the screwdriver tips, worn edges in the handles. There were no magazines, but Steve found a sheet of glass in a drawer that revealed itself as a tablet as soon as Steve touched it.

The tablet was inert for a few seconds while Steve just looked at it, admiring the translucent design, before a painting app opened without Steve needing to tap anything. Steve played with it for a while. He wasn’t trying to do anything fancy, just selecting different colors and trying out the different brush types, enjoying the sensation of finger painting without getting his hands messy. "JARVIS?"

"Good morning, Captain Rogers," JARVIS said immediately. “How may I assist you?”

Steve swiped his finger across the screen, leaving a wide streak of electric blue. “SHIELD gave me a briefing on Tony Stark before we met. It was only five paragraphs long. After the Chitauri invasion, I did my own research, but there’s a lot of information out there. I’m not sure what sources to trust. I was hoping you could help me out.”

“My privacy protocols necessarily restrict what I am able to disclose. Despite what his public appearances would suggest, Sir is quite conscious of information privacy. His own, at least,” JARVIS added dryly.

“I got that impression, yeah.” In a lot of the interviews Tony gave, especially ones where he’d been jumped by paparazzi instead of calling a formal press conference, he blithely confessed to being hungover or having spent the last seventy-two hours in bed with someone (or several someones), but he would also redirect or shut down any question that he didn’t want to answer. Tony was brazen, but only on his own terms. “I’m not asking for anything you’re not allowed to tell me. I can find plenty of information on my own, but a lot of it is sensationalized, and I don’t have the background to know what’s accurate. Can you help me sort through what’s out there?”

“I believe I can offer you a compromise, Captain Rogers. I am generally forbidden from sharing information about Sir unprompted, but there is nothing in my protocols that prevents me from _correcting_ information if asked, so long as that information isn’t restricted. If you would be amenable, I could provide a real-time fact-check on any information regarding Sir that you encounter in your research, based on my own knowledge. Would you like me to demonstrate?”

Steve held out a hand palm-up. “Please do.”

A browser window popped up on the tablet, displacing the painting program. Steve thought about where he’d done his previous research and typed in “Tony Stark Wikipedia.” When the familiar article loaded, it was covered in yellow annotations, everything from corrected dates to much more editorial comments:

 _If anything, sadly, this is an understatement._ __  
_A complete fabrication._ _  
_ _Not Sir’s finest hour, but not as dire as stated here._

One line caught his particular attention: “Stark is rumored to be dating Pepper Potts, the CEO and second-largest shareholder of Stark Industries.” JARVIS had added a note reading _Out of date, and therefore untrue_ with a link to a very short interview Ms. Potts had given to a reporter where she confirmed her relationship with Mr. Stark had ended and declined to comment further.

Steve blew out a slow breath and set the tablet aside. He hadn’t thought about Pepper until that morning. Tony hadn’t mentioned anything about their relationship during his visits to SHIELD, but Steve had known from SHIELD gossip that they were rumored to be involved. Knowing they weren’t anymore sent relief and guilt coursing through him: relief that Tony was unattached, that Steve wasn’t ruining someone else’s happiness by taking comfort where he could, and guilt that he was happy about someone else’s unhappiness.

He was also feeling increasingly silly about being wrapped in just a blanket as the mid-morning sun climbed the walls. Steve looked at his abandoned SHIELD-issued clothes with distaste. "JARVIS, is there a department store around here? I need new clothes."

"Of course, Captain. I'll have a selection sent up for you to choose from."

Steve's lips twitched. He folded his arms and looked in the general direction of where he thought the room's camera was. "Did Tony put you up to that, or is that your own idea?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Captain."

It wasn't the worst idea, Steve supposed. Steve really didn't want to wear his old clothes outside the safety of Stark Tower and suddenly reappear on SHIELD's grid. Borrowing clothes from Tony would only get him so far, given how different their sizes were. Tony projected presence like a much larger man, but he was a good three inches shorter than Steve (and he wore his pants a lot tighter).

If Tony wanted to buy him a new wardrobe, well, Steve knew Tony could afford it. “Okay. Thanks, JARVIS.”

Steve put his old pants and shirt back on, figuring that would be more appropriate than answering the door in a blanket toga. He ate some leftover noodles at the kitchen bar, contrasting the perfect quiet of the penthouse with the noisy, disorderly SHIELD mess where he’d last eaten lunch. Steve had usually eaten alone at the emptiest table he could find, after a few disastrous attempts to sit with other agents had led to stilted, carefully polite conversation. It didn’t matter that Steve wasn’t in the agents’ actual chain of command; he still got treated like an officer.

It was nice to eat without being stared at, but it was weird to be eating in a room so silent he could hear himself swallowing. It contrasted sharply with how it had been to eat with his men, and he couldn’t help but remember: Morita and Dum Dum trading jibes, Monty’s constant expression of fastidious martyrdom at whatever they’d scraped together that week, Dernier adding handfuls of weeds that might or might not have been poisonous to his portion, Bucky attacking his food like it would get up and run away if he stopped to chew--

Steve stood up fast and went back to the window. There were people on the sidewalks. Of course there were, this was still New York. He could find a bench to sit on where it was too loud to think, but in these clothes that would mean reappearing on SHIELD’s radar. The sense of being pinned down was a sour twist in his belly.

His head snapped around at a sound from the foyer. The elevator door hadn’t opened, but something was moving nearby. Steve crossed the room on silent feet.

It was the robot that had taken Tony’s coat the night before. When it saw Steve--did it have eyes? It must have a camera somewhere, although Steve wasn’t sure where--it reared back like Steve had startled it. Steve rounded his shoulders and put his hands in his pockets, like he was dealing with a frightened civilian.

“Hello,” Steve said to the robot. It scooted back an inch, then angled one of its three-fingered arms up inquisitively. “I don’t have a coat for you, sorry.”

The robot beeped at him in a descending tone, BOO-boop. Steve felt unreasonably guilty.

“How come you’re up here?”

“This unit is designated Peep,” JARVIS said. “Peep was originally intended to greet visitors in the lobby, but turned out to be, for lack of a better term, shy. Sir felt it was best that Peep have a more limited interaction with the public. Peep maintains order in the penthouse, to the degree that such a thing is possible.”

Steve looked around the nearly immaculate penthouse and decided he was better off not asking what JARVIS felt was disorderly about it. “That’s very helpful of you,” he told Peep, who gave him a little rising trill in response. Steve stepped aside and watched Peep trundle over to the sofa.

Peep folded Steve’s discarded blanket into a precisely straight rectangle, aligning its corners with the seat cushions. After doing a circuit around the sofa, Peep rolled back to the foyer closet. Steve followed, fascinated by the way Peep moved; it rolled on a central ball and waved its arms to counter-balance on turns. The result was both uncanny and graceful.

Peep emerged holding a spray bottle and a small cloth, then rolled directly towards the new stain on the sofa’s arm.

“Nonono,” Steve blurted, surging forward to physically block the robot’s access to the sofa. “Don’t worry about that, I’m cleaning that, I’ll clean it right now, thank you.”

Peep gave a confused whirr as Steve carefully plucked the cloth and and spray bottle of cleaning solution from its grasp.

“Thanks,” Steve repeated, hoping robots couldn’t identify blushes. “I got this. Could you do me a favor and clean the kitchen? I dropped some rice in there earlier.”

Peep trundled off willingly enough. Steve waited until it was out of sight before scrubbing at the stain he’d left on the sofa. It came off easily, thank God, because otherwise he would have to look up how to clean dried semen off of leather, and now JARVIS was in his tablet. Steve wasn’t 100% clear on the rules of human and AI etiquette, but he’d rather not test those particular boundaries this early in their relationship.

Steve was rinsing out the cloth in the bathroom sink when the elevator doors opened. He hung the cloth over the shower rod and went back out to the living room. A young man wearing a red uniform trimmed in gold braid was pulling a big rack of clothing, the kind they had in department stores, out of the elevator.

“Need a hand?” Steve helped him wheel the rack into the center of the room. It was heavy, loaded with hundreds of items of clothing--shirts, pants, pajamas, a few silk bathrobes (as though one silk bathrobe wouldn’t be extravagant enough), and a few things Steve didn’t even recognize. The bottom shelf on the rack held at least a dozen shoeboxes. It was more clothing than he could ever see himself needing, but honestly, after his conversation with Tony the night before, Steve was surprised he was only getting one rack instead of twelve.

“Thanks,” the man said, wiping an arm across his forehead. “Do you need anything else, Captain Rogers?”

“No, but thanks for bringing this up, uh,” Steve looked for a nametag and saw an embroidered patch on the man’s jacket that read _Minion-in-Training: Peter Parker_. “Peter.”

“Oh, you’re very welcome, Captain Rogers.” Peter looked like he was about sixteen, but if he was working for Stark Industries he was probably at least college age. Everyone looked young to Steve nowadays.

“Is Minion-in-Training your official job title?”

“Well, kinda. It depends on whether you’re asking Ms. Potts or Mr. Stark. I’m an intern?” Peter said, like he was apologizing for something. “So.”

“Okay,” Steve said. He could look up what an intern was later. “Nice to meet you, Peter.”

“Oh my god,” Peter whispered, as they shook hands. “I mean. Nice to meet you, Captain Rogers.”

“Please, call me Steve.”

“ _Oh my god_ ,” Peter whispered even more quietly. He cleared his throat and stood up as tall as possible. “Steve. Okay. Nice to meet you, Steve. Let me know if you need anything else. Or, I guess, let JARVIS know, and he’ll let me know? Or I could give you my phone number? Or--”

“Mr. Parker, your presence is required on floor 27,” JARVIS cut in firmly.

“Right, okay, I’m, I’m just gonna go.” Peter pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the elevator, while he was backing into it. “Nice to meet you! Enjoy getting dressed! I mean, enjoy wearing clothes. I mean--”

The elevator doors closed on the rest of Peter’s sentence. Steve stared at the doors bemusedly before turning to the rack of clothes. He started re-arranging the hangers, sorting from reasonable picks (soft t-shirts, flannel button-downs, warm sweaters, plain collared shirts that could go under a suit jacket) on the left, to things he thought were probably pranks (a turtleneck with a big faux-fur poof at the collar, a suit coat with a metallic gold sheen, a pair of skin-tight jeans with so many rips Steve was sure they’d fall apart if he tried to wash them) on the right. He’d sorted through most of it by the time the elevator opened and Tony sauntered out.

Steve held up a t-shirt that had “SCENIC OVERLOOK” and an arrow pointing down on the back. “This your handiwork?”

“Steve. You wound me,” Tony said, putting his hand over his chest. “If it were my handiwork, it would say PROPERTY OF STARK INDUSTRIES.”

“Oh, of course, my mistake.” Steve filed the shirt on the right-hand side of the rack, then around so he got to watch Tony’s face as he said, “If you gave me a shirt like that, I might wear it for you.”

Tony went satisfyingly still. Steve kept his expression mild, but inside he felt a little surge of glee. It was fun to surprise Tony. He was already getting addicted to the freedom of doing what came naturally instead of filtering everything he said through the Captain America™ lens.

“Noted,” Tony said, and Steve was sure that a PROPERTY OF STARK INDUSTRIES shirt would appear in the near future.

Steve glanced at the windows and saw that the sun was nearly overhead. “You on your lunch break?”

“Yep. I heard you were embracing the power of home shopping delivery and wanted to see the results. This your old stuff? Fantastic,” Tony said, stuffing Steve’s old SHIELD clothes into one of the paper bags last night’s take-out had come in.

“Are you going to burn them?”

“Of course not, that would be petty and dramatic. I’m going to have them dry-cleaned, then send the bill to Fury.”

“Wow,” Steve said. “You’re really taking the high road.”

“Paragon of virtue, that’s me.” Tony looked him over. Steve wasn’t wearing anything special, just a pair of undershorts and a sleeveless tank he’d put on so he could try on his new clothes over them, but there was unmistakable heat in Tony’s gaze. “You want to put on your new clothes so I can peel them off again?”

“Sir,” JARVIS interrupted firmly, “You have a meeting with Ms. Potts and the senior leadership team in thirty-seven minutes.”

Tony groaned and sprawled dramatically over the rack of clothing. This close up, Steve could see the dark circles under his eyes. “You’re killing me, J.”

“Per your own instructions, I am to ensure you attend every meeting Ms. Potts has marked as high priority for the foreseeable future.”

Tony grimaced and scrubbed one hand through his hair. Steve wondered just how long ago he and Ms. Potts had called it quits. Recently enough that Tony was on his best behavior, or something close to it. “Yeah, okay. Probably a good point. So, no nookie,” Tony said. “How about lunch? Want to put on your new clothes and have lunch with me?”

“I could eat.”

“You get dressed, I’ll be back.” Tony picked up the bag of Steve’s old clothes and walked out of the room with a spring in his step.

It was a strange feeling, sorting through the clothing looking for something to wear for Tony. Steve didn’t have to think about how fashions had changed, or what his clothes might be signalling to a modern audience. All he had to do was wear something Tony wanted to take off. Even if he didn’t have the time now, he would later, and Steve could admit in the privacy of his own head that he wanted Tony to be thinking of him during his meetings. Given how tight all of the shirts were, that wasn’t going to be difficult.

The shorts and undershirt he was already wearing were made of something soft and silky smooth. Their labels listed unfamiliar fabrics--more things to research. Steve consciously dropped that question from his mind. Right now, all that mattered was that they were comfortable and nice to touch.

Steve considered putting on one of the suits, but that seemed too formal, even though Tony was wearing a suit himself. This wasn’t a business lunch. He pulled dark jeans over his shorts and put on one of the plain white t-shirts, then caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the metal side of the garment rack. His own reflection surprised him. He looked...comfortable, almost, in his soft clothes and bare feet, standing in the middle of Tony’s living room. Like he belonged there.

He turned away fast, a little afraid of how much he liked it. It wasn’t safe to get used to this, to rely overmuch on Tony’s generosity. He couldn’t stay in the Tower forever, in self-imposed exile; someday the world would need to be saved again, and Steve knew he wouldn’t be able to ignore it if someone needed his help. He would need to put on the suit and lift the shield, no matter how heavy it felt.

For now, Steve could have this. He could stand in Tony’s home and be sure of his welcome. Tony had said they could do this as long as they both wanted to, and Tony’s interest was palpably clear. Eventually he would get bored, and Steve would have to go back to how things had been before--but not yet. Steve could have this, a vacation from the purpose he’d been made for, from the violence and loss that had shaped him, until then.

He took a few steadying breaths before pulling on socks and looking for shoes. There was a whole pile of boxes Steve hadn’t gotten to, but one of the first boxes he opened had a pair of thin black-and-white sneakers that looked a lot like Minion-in-Training Peter’s shoes. After a brief hesitation, he put them on. If he ran in them, they’d fall off, but he wouldn’t need to run. Not here. Not yet.

 

Steve had expected the elevator to take them back down to the garage level, but instead the doors opened and Tony stepped out on a floor labeled STARK INDUSTRIES CAFETERIA.

“Wow,” Steve drawled. “You‘re taking me to the mess hall? Be still my heart.”

Tony rocked back on his heels and grinned. “Hey, it’s still taking you out for lunch. Technically. And try the food before you complain. Next time I’ll take you out somewhere I can show you off, but we’re short on time, and SI has some of the best chefs in the country working here anyway.”

“Of course you do,” Steve said, taking comfort in the implicit promise of _next time_.

The cafeteria was set up like a massive cafe, with a few different long counters and a lot of tables, large and small, scattered around an open space with a bank of windows serving as one wall. There were potted plants and comfortable armchairs breaking up the expanse of tables. Tony steered Steve to a two-person table near the windows.

“You aren’t going to order?”

“Already did.” Tony waggled his phone, then frowned. “Did you have a phone apart from SHIELD’s spyware brick? No, of course not, what am I saying, why would they give you anything that would make it harder for them to eavesdrop? I’ll have one sent up.”

 _I don’t need it_ , Steve didn’t say. “What are you working on today?” he asked instead. Tony had drawn a battery design across two napkins and was diagramming the improvements he wanted to make on a third when a server arrived with their cheeseburgers. Steve asked enough follow-up questions to keep Tony talking throughout the meal. He was paying some attention to the conversation, but mostly he was watching Tony.

Steve hadn't gotten a chance to really look at Tony last night. He had been so caught up in what he was feeling that he'd forgotten to pay attention to anything but Tony's touch, his darkly amused voice, the pleasure he’d wrung out of Steve’s body. He looked now, letting his eyes roam over Tony's well-groomed facial hair and slim-cut suit, everything meticulous and distinctive. Nobody would ever mistake him for anyone else, not even at a glance.

He didn't move like a fighter, but like a dancer, all quicksilver turns and expressive gestures. There was strength in the spread of his shoulders, his surprisingly muscular biceps, the tight curve of his ass. He moved whenever he talked, communicating with his whole body. Steve could never quite predict when Tony was going to lean in, elbows on the table and fork stabbing forward for emphasis, and when he was going to relax back into his chair, satisfied his point had been made.

When Steve got too obvious about studying him, Tony started to pat his face. “What, do I have crumbs in my beard?”

“How would I know?” Steve asked, straight-faced. “I thought it was supposed to look like that.”

Tony threw a french fry at him. Steve ducked sideways to snap it out of the air with his teeth.

“Show-off. Using serum-enhanced reflexes is cheating, you know.” Tony’s phone vibrated in his pocket. “That’s my five-minute warning. Do me a favor and finish my leftovers.”

“Trying to get out of busing the table?”

“You caught me.” Tony scrubbed his fingers on a napkin and let his eyes linger on Steve’s lips a little too long to be casual. Steve was newly conscious of the background chatter of people around them; Tony’s employees, who would presumably notice and have opinions about it if Tony kissed a man in the middle of the cafeteria. And if anyone recognized Steve, they would see Tony kissing _Captain America_ in the middle of the cafeteria.

It wasn’t worth the risk. Steve knew that, and he understood it, but he was still unreasonably disappointed when Tony stood up without trying to touch him at all.

“I’m going to head to the workshop after this meeting so I get enough work done to stay in tomorrow. If you get bored, get JARVIS to show you how the TV and stuff works.”

“Okay.” Steve wasn’t going to get bored. Steve had a tablet with JARVIS on it and a recon mission to finish. “See you later.”

 

“Captain Rogers,” JARVIS was saying, dimly. Steve thought maybe JARVIS had been saying it for a while. He couldn’t hear much over the white noise crackling through his head.

“What? Sorry, JARVIS, I didn’t catch that.”

“Captain Rogers, you are close to breaking the tablet.” JARVIS sounded distinctly alarmed. Steve noted the fact without reacting to it. His vision was sharp, his hands shaking slightly. His body had ramped up for combat.

Steve set the tablet carefully onto the table. There was nothing and nobody to fight here. The attackers were long gone, and the damage long since done.

Obviously Tony was fine. He’d just seen Tony at lunch, he was _fine_ , he was--

“JARVIS, where is Tony now?”

“In his workshop, Captain.”

Steve’s feet had carried him to the elevator before he’d decided he was leaving. He didn’t try to resist. “Is that in the Tower? Can I see him?”

The elevator doors opened. His chest was too tight to gulp in more than a mouthful of air, so Steve just held his breath as the floor dropped.

The elevator opened onto a long hallway, a floor-to-ceiling glass wall dividing a huge, brightly-lit room from the hallway. Glass panels slid aside as Steve strode forwards.

Tony looked up fast when Steve came charging into the workshop. Steve stopped just inside the doors and looked him over. Tony was fine, of course. Probably wondering why Steve had just burst into his workshop in the middle of the afternoon, but alive and whole and unharmed. That was enough to let the knot in Steve’s stomach loosen.  

Tony turned off the blowtorch he’d been using and set it aside, flipping his visor up at the same time. His forehead was deeply furrowed. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Steve said. It was easier to breathe now, his chest expanding when he told it to and letting him gulp down air. The shakiness eased out of his limbs with every breath. “I mean,” he added, because Tony was giving him a very skeptical look, “nothing new, nothing that happened now. I just--I read something about you. About Afghanistan.”

Steve had heard about it before. Tony Stark’s capture by the Ten Rings had been two paragraphs of SHIELD’s five-paragraph briefing, and he’d gotten a few more details during his initial research, but with JARVIS boosting authoritative sources and burying unreliable ones, Steve had turned up a dry, clinical, _thorough_ memo by a State Department official that had been released a few months after Tony’s recovery. It hadn’t contained any images, but lines like _severe shrapnel injuries sustained in the initial attack, improvised emergency medical device prevented total cardiac failure,_ and _Mr. Stark’s minimal level of cooperation was likely obtained under severe duress_ painted their own graphic picture.

Tony’s face closed off all at once. The cool, confident smile he gave Steve could have been lifted from any of his press conference appearances. “Not very pleasant reading, Cap, although I’m delighted you’re Googling me. I have some excellent sex tapes I could recommend if you want to continue your research, they’re much more fun.”

“Don’t,” Steve said, his earlier fear flowing easily, too easily, into anger, his body already primed for a fight. He squared his feet and folded his hands behind his back in a bid for control. “Don’t, Tony. If you don’t want to talk about it, just tell me that.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Tony said immediately.

“Okay.” Steve looked around the workshop. It was full of so many interesting and mysterious things that Steve didn’t know where to start, but for his current purposes, the couch against one wall was all he needed. “You got pen and paper I could borrow?”

“Sure,” Tony said, looking at him warily. Steve gave him his most guileless expression back. When Tony gestured, one of the robots detached itself from the workbench and wheeled over to a side cabinet, then came back with a few sheets of graph paper and a ballpoint pen.

“Thank you,” Steve told the robot. The robot chirped and wheeled away, bumping into the corner of a lab bench as it passed. Steve sat on the couch and looked around for something to draw. There were so many options it was a little overwhelming, but Steve eventually settled on a half-disassembled Iron Man armor on a nearby table. He started sketching the helmet lying on its side next to an empty pair of gauntlets.

It was a treat to get to closely observe the inside of something he’d only seen the surface of before, and he got lost in all the little angles and curves hidden inside the armor. At some point he heard the blowtorch start up again.

Steve had shaded in most of the helmet's shadows and was working on fine detail by the time the torch clicked off.

“It’s a lot, I know,” Tony said, loud in the sudden quiet.

Steve looked up. Tony was standing over the bench, turning the visor over in his hands, staring at nothing. “What’s a lot?”

Tony gave him a smile that didn’t reach his eyes and tapped twice on his chest, where the blue of the arc reactor shone through his worn t-shirt. “This. Me, in general. I do realize that. It’s not that I don’t--” He cut himself off and made an expansive gesture towards the wall of the lab where his suits were lined up. They were powered down, their weapons hidden under the armor’s sleek curves, but Steve had only needed one glance at the Iron Man suit to know it was for combat. “It’s bad enough that I wear a metal suit and fly around with aliens shooting at me, at least that’s got a kind of reckless nobility of purpose, but this,” Tony said, rubbing the heel of his hand in a semi-circle under the reactor, “was just the result of my own short-sighted idiocy.”

The bitterness in his voice was clear. Steve swallowed back his first reaction, made himself slow down and think about his response, and settled on, “Did Pepper have a hard time with it?”

Tony’s eyes jerked to his, his face unsettlingly remote. “Well, she wasn’t thrilled. Seeing the aftermath of your boss’s non-consensual body modification isn’t fun. Being reminded of the torture your boyfriend went through every time he takes off his shirt is kind of a bummer. Hearing his screaming nightmares after he nearly dies flying a nuke through a wormhole into space is even worse, or so I’m reliably informed, especially when he can’t promise he’ll never do it again.” Tony’s hand had crept up to cover the arc reactor. He pulled it away as soon as he saw Steve looking and put both both hands flat on the workbench. “It wasn’t easy for her. It wouldn’t be easy for anyone.”

“She’s a civilian.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s a wimp,” Tony snapped. “Pepper’s tough, she’s--just because she doesn’t _punch_ people doesn’t mean she isn’t the strongest person I know.”

“I didn't mean she was weak. I just meant--people should get to be civilians. They deserve it. That’s what soldiers are for, to make a world where other people get the chance to be civilians. Just listen for a minute,” Steve said, too fast, because Tony was opening his mouth, and Steve wouldn’t be able to say this twice, he wouldn’t be able to start again if he was interrupted. “Please.”

Tony flattened his lips together and held out an open palm. He wasn’t happy, but he was listening.

“When I was a kid,” Steve said, slowly, feeling his way through every sentence, “I went to church every Sunday. The priest at church, the nuns at school, they told us all about hell. I thought it was somewhere you could only go when you were dead. And then I went to war. I saw things that I didn’t know could exist on earth. There were things in the Nazi camps, in the Hydra labs, that were worse than anything I could have imagined. I still dream about them, sometimes.”

Tony had come around the side of the workbench, standing where he could see all of Steve, and Steve could see all of him. He was holding himself very still. Steve wet his lips and continued. “I hope you never get hurt like that again, not by someone deliberately hurting you to make you break. But it’s not the worst thing I’ve seen. Not even close. When I see the arc reactor, I think about how you kept yourself alive. How you survived. I see you fly and it makes me think about what you can do, the people you’ve saved. That nuke would have hit New York. I know you’re not a soldier, but you’re not a civilian anymore, and neither am I. This is what we do. The risks we take, those are part of who we are. So no, it doesn’t put me off. It doesn’t scare me.”

“Well, of course it doesn’t,” Tony said, his voice only a little unsteady. “Your fear response is _broken_ , you absolute maniac. I remember how you fought against the Chitauri, and then I read the after-action reports, which are even _worse_. Not to mention what you’ve gotten up to on those little side-missions SHIELD’s been throwing you into. Don’t think I don’t know about those. You know parachutes are a thing, right? I could have sworn they had parachutes in the 40s.”

Steve’s body relaxed against the workshop bench. “You’ve been checking up on me?”

“Like you’re one to talk, reading up on my life story.”

“Everyone got a chance to hear mine already,” Steve said. “Turn-about’s fair play.”

“Point.” Tony picked at his sleeve, not quite looking at Steve. “You still freaked out when you read about it, though.”

“I just needed to see that you were okay.” Steve was embarrassed now by the force of his reaction, by how viscerally he had needed to lay eyes on Tony to believe that he was all right. He would have to be careful not to do something that revealing again. This had already been enough to spook Tony. “I don’t like that you got hurt. I’m never going to like it. I’m just not going to be surprised when it happens.”

“And you’re not going to ask me to stop.” It wasn’t a question, but it wasn’t _not_ a question.

“How did you put it in that press conference where you told everyone about it? JARVIS, can you play that audio?”

Tony’s voice came through the speakers in the workshop, about three times as loud as JARVIS normally spoke: _“I am Iron Man_.” The words were followed by a guitar riff that Steve didn’t recognize.

Tony covered his eyes with a hand. “Yes, okay, I get it. JARVIS, you can kill the music.”

The riff came to a neat stop.

“Thanks, JARVIS,” Steve said.

“My pleasure, Captain.”

“No,” Tony said, pointing at Steve, then at the corner of the workshop, where a camera Steve hadn’t noticed was squarely facing Tony. “Don’t even. You two are not allowed to gang up on me, that’s not how this is going to work.”

“Okay, Tony.”

“Of course, Sir.”

Tony glared at him. Steve was surprised to feel a smile growing wider on his face. He wasn’t sure when it had shown up.

“I’m going back to work now,” Tony said. “I’m a very busy and important man who has better things to do than argue with usurping houseguests who turn my AI against me.”

“You sure are,” Steve agreed mildly, and re-opened his sketchbook. He kept his head down and his pencil busy until the sounds of welding started up again. This time, once Tony was safely distracted by his work, he flipped the page and started sketching Tony instead, trying to capture the deft grace of Tony’s fingers and the focused calculation in his eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

“These are fantastic.”

Steve looked up and blinked. Tony was standing in front of him, flipping through the finished sketches Steve had set to the side on the workshop couch. At some point he’d run out of graph paper and one of the robots had brought him an actual sketchpad. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been drawing, but his shoulders were cramped from hunching over the pad on his knees, and he’d filled a dozen pages.

Some of them were drawings of Tony, and Steve got a squirmy hot feeling knowing that Tony had looked at those, but most of them depicted the armor or other projects Steve could see from the couch. Tony was holding a drawing of the disassembled Iron Man helmet close to his face, studying the details.

“Thanks.” Steve set the sketchpad aside so he could stretch out his arms. The serum kept him from actually getting sore when he held a position for too long, but he still got stiff. When he’d been young, he’d come out of drawing spells with his back locked up and his shoulders aching--he swung his shoulders now and marveled at the easy looseness. He couldn’t remember appreciating the difference before. Was this really the first time since he’d gotten the serum that he’d sat and drawn for hours?

Tony flipped through the whole stack again, slower this time, and set three of the project drawings aside, arranging them side-by-side on the couch cushions. “Can I convince you to do more of these? They’d look great in promotional materials.”

“Of course,” Steve said, a bloom of pleasure unfurling in his chest. He was almost embarrassed by the strength of it. Tony wouldn’t give unearned compliments, and he definitely wouldn’t use second-rate work for anything to do with his company. If he wanted to use Steve’s drawings to advertise his inventions, it was because he thought they were good work, full stop. “Just let me know what you want me to draw.”

Tony glanced at him, then took a second, more evaluating look. Only under Tony’s scrutiny did Steve realize he was blushing just from hearing Tony compliment his work.

“I’d put you on the payroll,” Tony said idly, picking up one of the drawings Steve had done of him, showcasing his muscular back and shoulders as he moved holographic diagrams through the air, “but SI has very strict policies on sexual harassment. The head of HR hates me enough as it is for my, and I quote, ‘capricious hiring decisions which make it impossible to maintain an orderly onboarding process,’ and if I crossed her on this she would find a way to kill me with her stapler. It’s a shame, really. I’d love to fuck you over my desk.”

Steve’s face was on fire. “I can see how HR would have concerns about that.”

Tony had a glint in his eye that made Steve wonder if he had a desk in the workshop, but before he could respond, the workshop doors slid open and Bruce walked in, coming to a sudden stop when he saw Steve there.

“Oh, hey, Steve.” Bruce waved awkwardly, then looked at his hand like he wasn’t sure what it was doing.

“Hi, Bruce.” They’d met a few times since the Battle of New York, enough that Steve felt comfortable with him, but they’d never had much to say to each other. Still, Steve liked Bruce. He was restrained with his body in a way Steve had learned after the serum, when he suddenly broke doors if he opened them too fast. The consequences of Banner misjudging his strength were a lot more catastrophic, but the methods of control were familiar enough for Steve to recognize.

“What brings you by?” Bruce asked.

Steve thought _I’m running away from SHIELD_ and _I’m here so Tony and I can fuck_ in the same half second and got stuck between them.

Tony stepped into the gap. “He’s staying with me for a while. We were about to have dinner, want to join us?”

Bruce glanced between them. Whatever conclusions he drew from Steve’s silence, he kept to himself. “Sure.”

 

Dinner was quiet, but not in a bad way. Tony had pasta delivered to a level of the Tower that Steve hadn’t seen before, a communal floor accessible from all the residential apartments that had theaters and attractions instead of bedrooms. The table where they ate could have sat twenty. They occupied one end of the long oval, Tony sitting at the head with his elbows on either side of his plate, dishing out food and bullying Bruce into taking seconds and generally directing the meal like it was a board meeting. Tony, unsurprisingly, carried most of the conversation, but he kept the topic bouncing between Bruce’s projects and the green energy work SI was doing without getting more technical than Steve could follow. Steve talked more than he expected to, mostly about architecture, once Bruce revealed that one of his current projects was sustainable building design. Bruce was restful company.

As soon as they’d finished eating, Bruce promised Tony he’d stop by his lab the next morning to play with biofuel cells, gave Steve a slightly less awkward wave goodnight, and slipped off to his own floor. Steve went exploring while Tony made himself an after dinner espresso--no wonder he didn’t sleep much--and wound up in a room that Tony called a “game room,” but which was bigger than any arcade Steve had seen. Tony appeared in the doorway while Steve was examining a space-themed pinball machine, his fingers looped together behind his back while he leaned in to look.

“It’s not a sculpture, you know.” Tony set his already empty cup on the next machine over and poked the power button. They watched the pinball machine turn on, the tiny space shuttle figurine glowing white as the case lit up. Steve had heard a lot about man walking on the moon in the first weeks after he woke up, the glorious achievement of mankind reaching out to explore the universe; it had taken another month of history briefings to find out the Apollo missions only got funded because they were part of the Cold War. Everything came back to a fight in the end. “You’re allowed to touch it.”

Steve slid his hands into his pockets. “It’s not a good idea. I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m kind of competitive.”

“You don’t say,” Tony said, with exaggerated surprise. “Why is that a problem? It’s an arcade game, competition is the point.” The pinball machine displayed a high-score board, “IRON MAN” filling all the slots. It was funny until Steve wondered how many games Tony had played by himself, alone in the giant room. Or maybe he was just really good at pinball.

“When I get too involved in something like this, I forget my own strength.” When he’d spent a summer on the USO tour circuit, they’d sometimes stopped in at towns having county fairs. Steve had broken more than a few carnival games before he’d learned to stop playing. It wasn’t worth the fuss and apologizing after, no matter how surreally hilarious it had been to watch the bell of the high striker fly off the machine when Steve swung the hammer.

Tony hit the controls for the flippers a few times, waving them idly back and forth. “Were you bored today?”

“No.” Steve hadn’t been, researching Tony and sketching in his lab had taken up enough time, but he could see how boredom would come on fast if he didn’t have something else to work on. “But I like to keep busy.”

“That can be arranged. In the meantime,” Tony said, eyes refocusing on Steve, “I never did get to peel you out of your new clothes.”

“Is this leading up to a terrible banana joke?”

“Well, not anymore, Captain Spoilsport. You could have said ‘you can peel my banana anytime,’” Tony said, doing a ridiculous breathy voice. Steve tensed his stomach muscles to keep from laughing. “But the moment’s gone, now.”

“What a pity,” Steve said. “Does that mean you don’t want to take my pants off?”

“Steven, darling, babycakes, don’t say such blasphemous things. I _always_ want to take your pants off.”

 

They’d barely stepped out of the elevator before Tony was pulling him across the room by his belt loops. “No couch this time, c’mon, bed.”

Steve followed him into the spare bedroom, where Tony didn’t bother to shut the door before spinning them around and yanking Steve’s shirt up.

“You call that peeling?” Steve said, but obligingly ducked his head and raised his arms. Tony was more careful than he expected with the collar, stretching it with his fingers so it didn’t catch on Steve’s ears. “If I were a banana, I’d bruise.”

“I’ll be more careful with your banana,” Tony promised solemnly, staring pointedly at Steve’s groin.

Steve swallowed back the urge to kiss him for the stupid joke. It would have come out too soft if he’d tried, given away too much. He crossed his arms instead, holding still while Tony attacked his button and fly. “This isn’t peeling, this is shucking. I feel like an ear of corn.”

“And when did you ever shuck corn, Brooklyn boy?”

“When I was helping Buck’s Ma make dinner. She was from Indiana. She hated the corn we got in the city, always said it was mealy, but she bought it anyway when she could find it.” Steve lifted his feet when Tony took his pants down to his ankles. Tony tugged his socks off at the same time, leaving Steve in just his new undershorts. “When did you, Manhattan?”

“Cookouts with Rhodey’s family. I went home with him sometimes when MIT let out for the summer.”

 _You didn’t go home to your parents?_ Steve was smart enough not to ask. The last time he brought up Howard hadn’t gone particularly well, and he had no desire to have a repeat of their helicarrier shouting match while he was close to naked in Tony’s guest bedroom. He gripped the waistband of his briefs in both hands when Tony reached for it. “You’re overdressed for this party.”

“Excuse you, I’m never overdressed or underdressed, I’m the one who sets the dress code for every party I attend,” Tony retorted, but he was already unzipping his jeans. He kicked his pants and underwear off without a trace of self-consciousness, but ignored his shirt in favor of reaching for Steve’s neck and shoulder. Steve dipped his head down for a few warm, languid kisses, but when Tony’s hands skated down his sides he stepped back an inch, just enough to make Tony pause and look at him.

Steve set his fingers on the hem of Tony’s t-shirt, not pulling on the fabric, just letting his hands rest against it. “I want to see you this time.”

Tony tensed up and Steve almost took it back, but he _did_ want to see Tony. If Tony didn’t want to be seen, he could say no, but this way he would at least know that Steve wanted to look. The urge had been building since their conversation in the workshop. The arc reactor and whatever scars surrounded it weren’t something Steve would shy away from, and the sooner Tony learned that, the better.

“Yeah, sure,” Tony said, voice casual. “You know the story anyway. It’s not like it’ll be a surprise.”

“It won’t be,” Steve said firmly, to answer his not-quite-spoken warning.

Tony nodded, eyes cutting to the side, and stepped back before drawing the t-shirt over his head. The light of the arc reactor was much brighter without it, more than a layer of thin cotton would account for. Steve wondered how many of Tony’s seemingly casual t-shirts were designed specifically to hide the reactor light.

Tony stood motionless while Steve looked at him. His breathing was too controlled. Steve wasn’t sure what reaction Tony was braced for, exactly, but he knew this wasn’t the moment to push. “Tony?” he said carefully.

"It's--don't touch the reactor, or the skin right next to it. Please."

"I won't," Steve said immediately, because Tony was stiff and avoiding his eyes, and that was all wrong. He stepped in close again, trying to remind Tony that he wasn’t on display for an audience. “Look at me, okay? There we go. It’s just me.”

Tony gave him a leering head-to-toe sweep. “You are pretty unmistakable.”

“An American original,” Steve agreed, and Tony’s mouth kicked up at the corner. Steve ran both his hands over the sides of Tony’s chest, neither lingering on nor avoiding the edges of the scar tissue radiating out from the arc reactor. Tony was still rigid under his hands, so Steve slid his fingers down to Tony’s bare ass and goosed him.

Tony _squeaked_. Steve, delighted, did it again.

“Fuck.” Tony grabbed for his wrists. Steve let Tony pull his hands away and hold them out to their sides. “You are a _menace_.”

“You like it.” Steve didn’t try to free his hands, just leaned forward until he could lick a broad stripe across Tony’s nipple.

“Well, I like _that_ ,” Tony said, his voice pitched lower. “And--yep, I like that too, good job, very quick study.”

Steve sucked again, adding a scrape of teeth this time, and Tony’s hands tightened on his wrists. He inhaled sharply as the feeling of being restrained triggered a reflexive burst of heightened awareness. His nerve endings all woke up at once.

“Is this doing it for you?” Tony stepped back, ignoring Steve’s small sound of disappointment, and brought Steve’s wrists together in front of their chests. He used his grip to walk Steve backwards towards the bed. “Is it the pressure on your wrists, being caught by something, or me holding you specifically?”

“Don’t know,” Steve said honestly. He didn’t really want to think about it. It was already hitting him, his thoughts sliding away to make room for the sensory onslaught he knew Tony was about to put him through. It was too new for Steve to trust in the magic to last; what if examining it too closely meant it stopped working? “Maybe all of it.”

Tony pushed him back hard enough that he hit the bed and bounced, then knee-walked onto the mattress to loom over him. “I can work with that. Hands on the headboard.”

Steve pressed his palms flat against the headboard. It was wooden, smooth-grained under his fingertips, without an inch of give. Teak, maybe. It would be hard to break. Steve felt like it might happen anyway, the way things were going, but if it did, it would be Tony’s fault for giving the order. He could replace it. Steve didn't have to worry about it.

Tony didn’t go straight for his shorts the way Steve expected. He worked his way down Steve’s hips to his ankles, smoothing his palms over Steve’s skin in a slow, proprietary stroke, like he had all the time in the world, like he knew Steve wasn’t going anywhere. When he went back up, his mouth followed the path of his hands, brushing his beard along the arch of Steve’s ankle, sucking a bruise into his inner thigh, taking Steve’s hipbone between his teeth and worrying it until he pulled a whine out of Steve.

“Eyes open,” Tony said, a little sharp. Steve forced his eyelids up. He wasn’t sure when he’d closed them. Tony was straddling his legs and look down at him, his dark eyes glittering blue from the light of the reactor.

“I’m going to get ready,” he said, “and you’re going to wait for me just like this.”

“Not if you take too long, I’m not.”

“You will if you want your dick in my ass tonight,” Tony said, and then had the absolute _nerve_ to stride into the attached bathroom--of course Tony’s guest rooms all had their own bathrooms--and _close the door_.

Steve gritted his teeth and settled in for a wait. Every time his body started to calm down, he’d hear a new noise from the bathroom and start imagining all over again what Tony might be doing in there. At one point Tony let out a low, satisfied groan and Steve pushed against the headboard so hard he heard something creak.

By the time Tony emerged, there was a wet spot on Steve’s briefs over the bulge of his erection. Tony raised his eyebrows and Steve went red all the way to his navel.

“Someone’s eager.”

“Because _someone_ took his goddamn time.”

“Worth every second, princess, because now,” Tony said, climbing onto the bed to straddle Steve’s hips, “I get to do this.”

Tony pulled the waistband of Steve’s shorts down to his thighs. Steve let out a sigh of relief at being freed that promptly turned into a yelp when Tony took his cock in hand and _sat_ on it. Steve slammed the headboard into the wall hard enough to dent the plaster.

“Oh fuck,” Steve said thinly, his hips jerking up of their own volition. “Oh _fuck_ , Tony.”

“That’s the idea,” Tony said, a little breathless. He’d taken in the head of Steve’s cock and was moving a slick hand along the rest, getting it coated with lube before rocking down experimentally. “Hold still.”

“You want me to hold still, you have to _tell_ me when you’re--” Steve’s voice pitched high and cut off as Tony lowered himself another inch in an agonizingly pleasurable slide. He bit his tongue hard until he backed off from the edge of coming.

“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?”

“Tony, I’m sorry, I can’t wait,” Steve gasped. The pressure, the heat, was already almost too much. He was so worked up already, there was no way he’d be able to last when Tony really got going.

Tony just made a thoughtful noise. “You stayed pretty hard when you came yesterday.”

Steve groaned and let his head fall back against the bed, pressing his crown into the headboard. He already knew where this was going.

“You’ll be sensitive after,” Tony said, relentlessly putting into words the thoughts that were making Steve’s cheeks burn even hotter than before. “But that didn’t seem like much of a problem yesterday, either.”

“You’re going to kill me.”

“Only the little death.” Tony shifted his hips experimentally, finding a new angle, and Steve choked on nothing. “Maybe a few little deaths, depending.”

It was four, in the end, which was good enough for Tony to finally let himself go and come on Steve’s heaving chest, but he had a worryingly analytical look that made Steve think he wasn’t getting away with not breaking his record for most orgasms in a night for very long. It was hard to worry about it. Steve passed out before Tony even finished cleaning them both up, asleep as soon as he knew Tony didn’t need him for anything else.

 

Footsteps in the hall.

Steve opened his eyes. He was clean and under the covers, alone in the guest bed. It was still fully dark. He’d heard footsteps walking away from Tony’s bedroom. Tony was up again.

Steve hesitated for a few seconds, then slid out of bed. If Tony had already left again, gone to his workshop or wherever he went when he wasn’t sleeping, so be it, but Steve knew he wasn’t going to be able to ignore this for long, not if it happened regularly. He’d spent too long alert for teammates in trouble, monitoring his men’s moods by how many cigarettes Monty had hoarded and how often Dum Dum combed out his mustache and how many times Bucky startled silently awake in the next bedroll over. He might as well figure out how to handle this now.

He scuffed his bare feet against the hallway as he left his room, not wanting to sneak up on Tony. The atrium was dark, but there was enough ambient light to see Tony sitting on one of the couches. He looked up when Steve came into the room.

“Hey,” Tony said. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. It was disturbing to see Tony at a loss for words.

“Hey.” Steve leaned against the doorway. “Bad dreams?”

“Sand, caves, drowning.” Tony shrugged, jerky and quick. “The usual.”

“Because of what we talked about earlier?" Steve said, stomach sinking. He’d noticed that about his own nightmares. If he read something about the war, he’d dream about the trenches that night, no matter how dry and academic the text was.

“It’s been more dying-in-space lately than dying-in-Afghanistan, so, that’s something. Variety!” Tony twirled one finger in a little circle, then let his hand fall limply into his lap.

“Think you can sleep again?”

“I’m just going to wait it out, try again tomorrow. You want to help me kill time?” Tony pointedly dropped his gaze to the front of Steve’s pants, like Steve might have missed the implication otherwise.

Steve’s baser self stirred at the offer, but Tony sounded exhausted. “Maybe later. You ever watch Buster Keaton films?”

“Who’s he, a porn star?” Tony asked. He flopped his head over the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling.

Steve snorted. “Not exactly. Although I did have a pretty big crush on him, back in the day.”

Tony rolled his head to look at Steve. “You had a crush on Buster Keaton?”

“I _knew_ you knew who Buster Keaton is. Put something of his on, I’ll be right back.”

“Was it the eyeliner?” Tony called, as Steve went into the kitchen. “Because I’m not opposed to wearing a little eyeliner, I had a whole thing in the late 90s.”

“I know, I’ve seen the pictures,” Steve called. He looked around the kitchen, thinking vaguely that he should make something to drink. He was copying Tony's moves, Steve realized; and, well, why not? Steve had certainly ended that first night more relaxed than he’d started. Even if they skipped the orgasms after, a drink was a good place to start.

Tony had made Steve a scotch on the rocks, but he'd also said alcohol was a risky coping mechanism for people without superhuman tolerance, and Steve didn’t think scotch was going to do Tony any favors right now. Steve opened cupboards until he found a saucepan.

Tony made a hilariously indignant face when Steve came back into the atrium and presented him with a mug of steaming milk. "Warm milk? Seriously? What am I, seven years old?"

"It's good for you," Steve said in his most sanctimonious voice.

"I hate you," Tony said, and wrapped his hands around it. His face changed after his first sip. "Okay, this is surprisingly not terrible. It's almost acceptable, even. What did you put in this?"

"Sugar, nutmeg, a little almond extract. And I used your fancy coffee robot to steam the milk."

"It's an espresso machine, Steve, not a robot, I haven't even modified it. Much." Tony shifted the mug to one hand and stretched the other out over the back of the sofa. Steve took the hint and sat beside him, slumping down to rest his head on Tony’s shoulder when Tony’s arm pulled him in. The glass panel in front of them lit up with the title card for Sherlock Jr.

"Roll it, JARVIS," Tony ordered, and the movie started to play. Steve felt a moment of vertigo at the juxtaposition between the opening moments of the film, sharper than his pre-serum memories recalled it, and the heat and smell of Tony along his side. Both were familiar, but in wildly different contexts.

Steve had nightmares of his own, sometimes. Dreams where he was still in the war, running through bombed-out cities looking for shelter while planes droned overhead. Dreams where he woke up in the hospital room SHIELD had set up, but there was no nurse, no agents, nobody around him, just miles of empty hallway in a silent world where he’d outlived everyone else. Dreams where he scratched at an itch on his neck, scratching and scratching until he found the cracks in his skin and pulled the flesh off his face, leaving nothing but raw red flesh stretched thin over bone.

Steve was very, very glad his eidetic memory didn’t extend to dreams.

Still, he knew how to deal with nightmares. He could wake up and feel relief that it was over, that what he’d dreamed about hadn’t actually happened. Far worse were the dreams where he was sitting at his kitchen table in Brooklyn, Glenn Miller playing on the wireless, the air coming through the window reeking of garbage and cigarettes, his sleeves rolled up carefully past his bony elbows so his cuffs didn't smear the drawing he was working on. The past was a scab that his mind couldn't stop picking away at while he slept.

Tony’s head rolled to the side, his cheek resting against Steve’s hair. He wasn’t asleep, his breathing was too fast for that, but he was relaxing bit by bit. Steve was glad. He couldn’t get rid of his own dreams, but maybe he could help Tony come down from his. He closed his eyes, the score underpinning the film fading into the background as he focused on the sound of Tony breathing. Having Tony pressed up warm against his side was almost like sleeping in the same bed.

It couldn’t last, he knew, but for however long he got to have this, he was going to let himself pretend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still working on this! I think the next chapter won't take as long to get ready because I've got most of it written, but I'm treating this like a very low-stress project that happens when it happens, so I'm hesitant to make promises. Thanks to all of you who are sticking with it!


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